A birth certificate is a foundational document: in most official procedures, it is the only way to establish a person's identity, age, and parentage. It is required to acquire citizenship, in civil and family matters such as inheritance and marriage, to obtain social benefits, and in many other situations.
For that reason, the document is needed both by people who were born in Ukraine and still live there and by those who left the country long ago. For Ukrainian citizens living in Ukraine, obtaining a duplicate birth certificate is usually straightforward, because the details in the civil registration record match the details in their current documents.
Ukrainian authorities treat a different situation as non-standard: a person born in Ukraine who later acquired the citizenship of another country. In that case, the key to obtaining a duplicate birth certificate is proving that the applicant and the person named in the civil registration record are one and the same individual.
The Core Problem
The difficulty stems primarily from the language in which the records were made. In the Soviet Union, the vast majority of birth records were kept on paper in Russian.
The current Rules of State Registration of Civil Status Acts in Ukraine, approved by Order of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine No. 52/5 of October 18, 2000, provide in paragraph 10 of Section I: "Record-keeping in civil registration authorities shall be conducted in the state language."
Under paragraph 1.5 of the Instruction on Maintaining the State Register of Civil Status Acts of Citizens, approved by Order of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine No. 1269/5 of July 24, 2008, "The Register shall be maintained in the Ukrainian language."
The mechanism for moving records from Russian into Ukrainian is set out in paragraph 2.1.10 of Chapter 2.1, Section II of the same Instruction: "Information from paper civil registration records made in a language other than the state language shall be entered into the Register in the Ukrainian language."
In other words, when an archived record is entered into the Register, the registrar renders its contents in Ukrainian, effectively translating or transliterating the Russian-language record to create the electronic entry. The provision does not specify how surnames and given names are to be rendered, so the result depends on how the individual official handled it.
Consider a typical scenario. A person was born in Ukraine during the Soviet era, and the birth record was made in Russian. Shortly afterward, the person emigrated to another country and acquired citizenship there based on Russian-language documents, and the name in that country's passport was transliterated into the Latin alphabet from the Russian spelling.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the archived record is entered into the Register and rendered in Ukrainian. As a result, two transliterations were made independently of each other, by different authorities and under different rules, and the spelling of the surname or given name may differ between them.
To illustrate, consider a hypothetical example that does not relate to any real person. The Russian-language record reads "Лисовская Елизавета Николаевна" (Lisovskaya Elizaveta Nikolaevna); the foreign passport lists the same person as Lisovsky Elizabet; back-transliterating that into Ukrainian yields "Лісовскі Елізабет" (Lisovski Elizabet); while the Register may list the same name as "Лисовська Єлизавета Миколаївна" (Lysovska Yelyzaveta Mykolaivna).
All four forms belong to the same person, yet none of them follows unambiguously from another, because a single Latin letter can be rendered in Ukrainian in several ways, and there is no one correct back-transliteration. On top of that, the patronymic is lost: many countries' documents have no such name element, so it never makes it into the foreign passport.
Moreover, the applicant's representative has no way of knowing in advance how the surname, given name, and patronymic were rendered in Ukrainian when the record was entered into the Register. Ultimately, these spelling discrepancies make it impossible for officials of the state civil registration office (RACS) to establish that the applicant and the person in the record are the same individual.
Legal Basis for Reissuing a Certificate
Reissuance is governed by Article 19 of the Law of Ukraine "On State Registration of Civil Status Acts" (Закон України «Про державну реєстрацію актів цивільного стану»), which provides that a civil registration certificate whose original was stolen, lost, damaged, or destroyed, as well as a certificate reissued after a record has been amended or restored, "shall be reissued by civil registration offices, diplomatic missions, and consular posts of Ukraine on the basis of the civil registration record."
A duplicate, therefore, is not a new document but a reproduction of what is already in the civil registration record, which is why the authority must be satisfied that the person applying and the person named in the record are one and the same.
This requirement stems from the limited circle of persons entitled by law to obtain a reissued birth certificate. Under the same Article 19, a birth certificate is reissued to the person named in the record, as well as to that person's parents, adoptive parents, guardians, custodians, a representative of the healthcare or childcare institution where the child permanently resides, and the guardianship authority.
The reason for this restriction lies in Part 3 of Article 9 of the same Law: information contained in a civil registration record "is confidential and shall not be disclosed."
If the name in the original document, such as the birth certificate, differs from the name the person uses today, the authority may refuse to issue the document or suspend review of the application until the discrepancy is resolved. A discrepancy that seems obvious to the person concerned remains, from the authority's perspective, a sign that someone else may be requesting the document.
A person's name is defined by Part 1 of Article 28 of the Civil Code of Ukraine: "The name of a natural person who is a citizen of Ukraine consists of a surname, a given name, and a patronymic, unless otherwise provided by law or by the custom of the national minority to which the person belongs."
A birth record made in Ukraine contains all three elements, so for Ukrainian authorities, the person's name remains a surname, given name, and patronymic, regardless of how it appears in a foreign passport.
Foreign-language documents must be submitted with a translation: under paragraph 7 of Chapter 1, Section II of the Rules of State Registration of Civil Status Acts in Ukraine, they are submitted "together with their translations into Ukrainian, certified in the established manner." Accordingly, a document by which a foreign authority confirmed the person's name change, such as a name change certificate, a court order, or a schedule to a certificate of naturalization, is submitted to the civil registration office together with a certified Ukrainian translation.
How Identity Is Established in Practice
Before issuing a duplicate, the civil registration office must be satisfied that the applicant and the person in the record are one and the same. To that end, every name change made after the record was created must be supported by a document stating the basis for the change. If there were several changes, those documents must form an unbroken chain from the civil registration record to the current passport.
An Israeli citizen born in Ukraine had changed her name twice: first her surname upon marriage, and later her given name upon repatriation. Her identity was established through extracts from Israel's civil registration books, where both changes had been recorded.
The extracts confirmed that she was born in Ukraine, listed her parents' names, and recorded each change of surname and given name along with its basis. They were apostilled, translated into Ukrainian, and sent to Ukraine in the original.
In another matter, a duplicate birth certificate was obtained for a U.S. citizen who had changed her given name, surname, and sex. The basis was two court orders on the change of name and sex, both apostilled and translated into Ukrainian.
However, not every foreign document will do. For instance, foreign marriage certificates often do not state that the wife took her husband's surname, since in many countries this is taken for granted.
A Ukrainian marriage certificate states this expressly, and for a Ukrainian authority it matters that a surname change upon marriage be confirmed by a document rather than inferred. A foreign marriage certificate of this kind therefore needs to be supplemented with another document that expressly states the basis for the surname change.
That was the situation of a U.S. citizen, born in Ukraine, who took her husband's surname after marriage. Her marriage certificate contained no notation of the surname change.
The issue was resolved with a name change certificate expressly stating that she had changed her maiden name to her husband's surname by reason of marriage. That document linked the surname in the birth record to the surname in her current passport.
Naturalization documents present a separate challenge. One of our clients completely changed his given name and surname when he was naturalized in another country. The certificate of naturalization showed only his new name, so on its own it did not connect him to the Ukrainian birth record.
Along with the certificate, however, the client had received a schedule confirming the name change made during naturalization. The apostilled certificate and schedule together allowed the civil registration office to establish his identity.
The takeaway is that only a document issued by a competent foreign authority, one that can be apostilled or legalized, can serve as proof.
In addition, Disputes Law Firm has used court orders on name changes, official population register extracts, and certificates from competent authorities confirming a name change by reason of naturalization, marriage, or the person's own choice.
Which document confirms a name change, and how to obtain it, is governed by the law of the issuing country, not by Ukrainian law. That question is therefore best put directly to the competent authority of that country.
Whatever the document is called, it must show both the former and the new surname, given name, and patronymic, if any, along with the basis for the change. Without these, the document will not establish identity for the civil registration office.
The document must be apostilled or legalized for use in Ukraine, as only then will it have legal force in Ukraine. It is then sent to the representative, who prepares a notarized copy and a Ukrainian translation, which is the final step before filing with the civil registration office.
Conclusion
For people born in Ukraine who hold foreign citizenship, the difficulties in obtaining a duplicate birth certificate are systemic. The record was made in Russian, entered into the Register in Ukrainian, and the documents of the new country were issued under its own rules, and none of these steps was coordinated with the others.
The civil registration office cannot resolve the discrepancy at its own discretion, because the information in the record is confidential and the circle of persons entitled to the certificate is limited by law. Where the names do not match, a document must establish identity.
A successful outcome, therefore, depends on whether a complete chain of documents has been assembled in advance, one that leads from the birth record to the current passport and confirms each name change along with its basis. With such a chain in place, identity ceases to be an obstacle and the matter is resolved through the ordinary procedure.
